Sometimes its really hard to gauge a well done healing job only based on HPS. Typically, I have the assignment of healing the Tank/OT and my fellow priest/druid healing takes care of most of the raid damage so they'll show higher HPS. If I popped Cone and Radiance on Cooldowns, my HPS can go off the charts.

Also, 12k comparison to your 8k seems more like an equipment issue if anything, considering the same amount of heals you used. That, or he has a higher reaction time compared to you to heal others.

I do like that little mini chart you created, showing different healing styles. I have almost never used FL on most of the fights, strangely enough. I almost exclusively chain DL unless its a very low period of damage time. It is however since I consider holy pallys having the strongest single target healing and am usually assigned to a tank that is getting burst down.

I also swap my beacon around every now and then, which does reduce my own HPS.

I do get made fun of my overhealing done all the time (Beacon of Light, Cone, and Self Healing makes up 95% of my OH). Gotta love my pally.

edit: My own HPS ranges from 8k-12k depending on my role in the fight.

Forgrim wrote:Also, 12k comparison to your 8k seems more like an equipment issue if anything, considering the same amount of heals you used. That, or he has a higher reaction time compared to you to heal others.

I'm honestly not bothered by the difference. Yes, he has better gear than me (his main spec vs. my off spec), which is noticeable in the effect his higher haste has on the number of spells cast per encounter, but he's also just better at healing than I am, since I heal maybe 2 (raid) bosses a week and he's healing on 9-10, has been MS Holy since forever etc etc.

I posted some logs to show where and how I heal in 25, but I can tell you (as I happen to know) that 25s tend to be slightly more AOE healing orientated, but for the most part the same amount of healing is required per healer in 25 and 10. I barely use HL in heroic fights.

This log shows the sort of healing breakdown that I use in the difficult fights (ignore the fact that we have so many disc priests, Halfus is an oddity there but the breakdown is still good), where you can see that divine light has already become king and I am getting more healing out of flash than HL also. I also dismay that you choose to compare gearsets based on heroics (I assume you meant 5 mans). Heroics aren't any test of how good gear and stats are (I mean come on, HPS comparisons in dungeons mean nothing), but at least your conclusion is correct that spirit/int/haste gear is the best.

You must ALL get out of the mindset that meters and HPS makes you a better healer, we are not DPSers or tanks racing against omen. If your assignments don't die, you win. If nobody dies, then the only point of meters is to show who helped other people with their assignments faster. I could quite easily get 15k HPS in most fights by spamming light of dawn no matter if someone is critical or not, and just going around sniping everyone else's assignments. I may do 9k more HPS than everyone else there, but if I was assigned to tanks and the tank died because I was just raid healing than I am holding everyone back.

Haste is better than other stats, holy radiance or not, period. It allows you to react faster to damage spikes, which is so key in heroic raids I cannot stress. It's also amazing for Chimaeron and keeping everyone above 10k. Divine light WILL be your go-to heal when you all start heroic raids, and haste is so godly for it it is insane.

And Haste has little effect on FoL (already fast enough) and while it would help the cast time of Divine Light, I don't really want to be casting it faster because that means I am going OOM faster.

This is flawed logic. You must heal as much as damage taken demands, mana or not. If you are forced to use divine light, its because damage is high enough that holy light is a waste of time, but not flashing because someone won't die in the 0.7 seconds or so difference between the casts. If you continue to spam Divine light after this fact, it should be because damage is demanding it, not because your casts are faster so you can over-heal faster. Mana plays no part in haste being better or worse, and I see this argument alot so I figured I would address this, your heals are just as efficient with more haste or without - they still do the same amount of healing for the same amount of mana. If your encounters are forcing you to spam FoL, then you are doing things wrong somewhere. FoL does not suck, but it is hardly going to be the largest portion of healing done given the encounters as they are right now. FoL should be doing a similar amount of healing as Holy light, if not less. As Epimer mentions, there shouldn't be that many casts of FoL - even on heroic encounters where damage spikes are king like halfus it was only 8.8% of my healing which I think other than Chimaeron heroic will be the most amount of healing I do with FoL.

I posted some logs to show where and how I heal in 25, but I can tell you (as I happen to know) that 25s tend to be slightly more AOE healing orientated, but for the most part the same amount of healing is required per healer in 25 and 10. I barely use HL in heroic fights.

This log shows the sort of healing breakdown that I use in the difficult fights (ignore the fact that we have so many disc priests, Halfus is an oddity there but the breakdown is still good), where you can see that divine light has already become king and I am getting more healing out of flash than HL also. I also dismay that you choose to compare gearsets based on heroics (I assume you meant 5 mans). Heroics aren't any test of how good gear and stats are (I mean come on, HPS comparisons in dungeons mean nothing), but at least your conclusion is correct that spirit/int/haste gear is the best.

You must ALL get out of the mindset that meters and HPS makes you a better healer, we are not DPSers or tanks racing against omen. If your assignments don't die, you win. If nobody dies, then the only point of meters is to show who helped other people with their assignments faster. I could quite easily get 15k HPS in most fights by spamming light of dawn no matter if someone is critical or not, and just going around sniping everyone else's assignments. I may do 9k more HPS than everyone else there, but if I was assigned to tanks and the tank died because I was just raid healing than I am holding everyone back.

Haste is better than other stats, holy radiance or not, period. It allows you to react faster to damage spikes, which is so key in heroic raids I cannot stress. It's also amazing for Chimaeron and keeping everyone above 10k. Divine light WILL be your go-to heal when you all start heroic raids, and haste is so godly for it it is insane.

And Haste has little effect on FoL (already fast enough) and while it would help the cast time of Divine Light, I don't really want to be casting it faster because that means I am going OOM faster.

This is flawed logic. You must heal as much as damage taken demands, mana or not. If you are forced to use divine light, its because damage is high enough that holy light is a waste of time, but not flashing because someone won't die in the 0.7 seconds or so difference between the casts. If you continue to spam Divine light after this fact, it should be because damage is demanding it, not because your casts are faster so you can over-heal faster. Mana plays no part in haste being better or worse, and I see this argument alot so I figured I would address this, your heals are just as efficient with more haste or without - they still do the same amount of healing for the same amount of mana. If your encounters are forcing you to spam FoL, then you are doing things wrong somewhere. FoL does not suck, but it is hardly going to be the largest portion of healing done given the encounters as they are right now. FoL should be doing a similar amount of healing as Holy light, if not less. As Epimer mentions, there shouldn't be that many casts of FoL - even on heroic encounters where damage spikes are king like halfus it was only 8.8% of my healing which I think other than Chimaeron heroic will be the most amount of healing I do with FoL.

I healed my first caty dungeon with my Holy Paladin last night, and I think I understand a little better why Paladin healers emphasize haste more than the other healers (I've mostly played a holy priest and resto shaman before this).

Paladins seem much more GCD constrained than my other 2 healers. They're chain casting too of course, but don't have to squeeze in judgement, holy shock, and wog. Mana wasn't ever a problem (which was good because I forgot to buy level 85 water :-O in my rush to get gems and enchants before my LFD group popped)

Conversely, when my other two healers were fresh 85s in ilvl 329, mana was the big problem, not GCDs.

As far as stats, I think Minarva has the right track, playstyle seems to be the driver here, whatever works for you to keep the raid up.

As a10m raider, I will say, I usually post ~ 12k hps, and until 4.0.6 I was able to manage my mana through seal of insight and div plea. My playstyle, as I posted on the how do I heal thread is to hit Holy Shock on every GCD (critical). Otherwise I tend to rely on WoG when avail and Divine Light otherwise. Most of the time I regard Holy Light as completely useless, for the following reason. HL hits for 8.5k-10k, and crits for ~ 14k but has a 2sec cast time. For a tank taking 30k+ hits every 2 secs from a Halfus drake or a Magmaw mangle (upto 80k), HL doesn't cut it and will simply force me to rely on Flash of Light and eat my mana. If the tank/raid are full I sometimes use Holy Shock offensively just to generate the Holy Power to have a full strength WoG on standby. FoL is last resort. I do notice with DL that I can put a non-trivial shield on the tank, allowing me to melee for a moment between casts to recover some mana.

As long as I can manage my mana, I like Haste, but I also note that crit is really nice in conjunction with mastery. And keep in mind we are early in this expansion. Once we all have full gear in 4.1, the mix between haste/mastery and even spell selection may shift. For instance, If I could place a 30% shield on a target with mastery, and crit 30% of the time, then I might think Holy Light might become other than useless.

Tuesday night when the patch hit, I was unhappy. The 10% nerf was really hitting me hard, especially since out mage was unavailable, so my mana pool was lower than normal. I do take sprit food/elixir for raids because normally I have ~100k raid buffed pool. On tues, I got the trinket Jar from BwD, but failed immediately to capitalize on its use. The jar brought me down to 90k raid buffed mana (vs 285 int trinket and mage buff, and loss of 60-int from off-hand enchant) and that combined with 10% increase in DL cost left me perpetually struggling with oom. Yesterday, the mage was back, and I had added the Jar to my DivPlea macro, greatly aiding mana recovery, but I am still annoyed as I am in 355 gear and should probably not have to sweat mana so much on normal modes. I also recall when I was barely in 329 gear and doing heroics with other 329 folks, going oom was always a high risk on boss fights with my then 68k pool and 2k combat regen, so I seriously question how a starter pally healer could avoid getting kicked with the 10% nerf.

I am also considering changing my food/elixir to intellect for the following reason. Yes, my combat regen will suffer a little, but this will be offset by gains through DivPlea and Seal of Insight, as well as providing me a larger initial pool to draw on.

I am only moderately annoyed at the nerf to Lay on Hands. I mean, its a 10min CD, and with forebearance, I can't even use it on a tank thats already used it on himself and now no benefit thu Beacon either is a bit of an adjustment. I also think the forebearance nerf is dangerous for Halfus. A lot of pally tanks like to bubble off their stacks of mortal strike, but if a pally healer panics and drop LoH prior to that, then forebearance would prevent bubbling.

Hrobertgar wrote: As a10m raider, I will say, I usually post ~ 12k hps...my playstyle, as I posted on the how do I heal thread is to hit Holy Shock on every GCD (critical). Otherwise I tend to rely on WoG when avail and Divine Light otherwise. Most of the time I regard Holy Light as completely useless

Well, you are a bit better geared than I am (I think you stated 355 gear level where I am at 348); however, you are not the 2nd person to state that you are hitting 12k HPS in this level of gear and I just find that, amazing.

My last two raid nights have me at between 8.5k - 9.0k HPS. Yes, yes, to those out there that says HPS is worthless to a healer I understand what you are saying. But I tend to disagree in that if another healer of my class is putting out 33% more healing than I am than there is something to be learned there.

What is your typical healer setup and what is your typical assignment? I assume from your comments that you are still a tank healer so how much do you help out on the raid?

How much are you meleeing for SoI returns? How often are you using Divine Plea? How much Spirit are you running with? How much Haste?

Just wondering if there is something immediate I can use to improve my healing style. I am typically asked to Beacon a tank and then either heal another tank or raid heal so that may be a difference as well but an extra 33% effective healing is pretty....wow.

We usually run 1 pally heals, 1 druid, and the 3rd healer is either a priest or a shammy, although for Chimaeron we actually had a ret pally go holy-os as a fourth healer to help with ppl getting gibbed by not getting a heal soon enough after a slime, it was also a big help during the feud phsae.

I typically beacon my tank. I cast Holy Shock on CD (preferentially on a target other than my beaconed tank, as an attack even if the raid is at full health). This allows me to gain free holy power, as well as heal the tank through beacon. Sometimes I save WoG for an incoming boss ability, but only if it is fairly soon, usually I use it freely, also preferentially on a non-beaconed target. Eternal glory does sometimes give me a double proc, for 3 WoG in a row, which is a nice savings on mana while combat regen replenishes me.

When the tank needs heals I like Divine Light, its a decent amount of heals for the cast time and provides holy power (thru Tower of Radiance) when cast on my beaconed target, and usually provides me some time to melee for mana recovery through mastery shielding and keeping my tank near full. After my tank, my primary target for Div Light is the other tank, as the raid should be avoiding big hits for most fights.

I prefer to avoid Flash of Light except for emergencies as it eats mana. I use Holy Radiance when raid is in tight formation taking aoe damage and it can be 100k per cast on 30sec CD, but sometimes also just for the speed rush to get somewhere. I look for an opportunity to hit Lay on Hands about halfway through and encounter or in the kill phase for free heal as well as mana recovery. I look for heavy raid dmg to use Guardian of Ancient Kings, to heal while keeping mana drain maangeable. I also will adjust aura and use aura mastery (even though shammy totems often provide resistance) also to cut down on raid dmg. I also will try to apply Hand of Sacrifice on the tank as he gets near 30% health, then spam DL rather than FoL, again to save mana, although I learned not to do this on the chimaeron fight.

I personally do not like Holy Light, it is too weak for its cast time. For Chimaeron it cannot reliably heal for 10k, which is a big risk for an upcoming massacre or double strike.

I generally hit this macro in a non-critical healing moment sometime below 80% mana, lower now that I have 2 trinket abilities, and I look for it on every CD thereafter. In Lich King I had 2 macros, since AvWrath and the Ill Heal 50% reduction were each 3min CDs vs 1 min for DivPlea, now I have just the one macro. I usually continue my normal healing roation during DivPlea, and do not try to switch to Flash of Light to make up for the 50%. Its only a few seconds and the other 2 throughput abilities make up for some of the 50% loss.

I also run with ~3k combat regen using spirit food & spirit elixir, although my new trinket may allow me to switch into int buffs. My understanding is that other heal classes have like 4k+ combat regen to make up for no Seal of Insight, but I am not certain about this.

Finally, I prefer to melee the boss or primary add for any encounter requiring heavy healing.

When I look at recount mana abilities, I want to say melee is often about half my total regen but maybe I have that wrong (sometimes less due to chain heals preventing melee strikes), Div Plea macro usually goes off twice per encounter, sometimes 3 times so with ~100k raid buffed mana pool its usually near 15k each time. Combat regen also contributes a fair chunk on a long encounter. I remember Div Plea is usually my number 2 ability, so maybe combat regen is my top ability, I'll pay more attention when I heal again, probably monday, or definately tuesday.

1. I use Holy Light much more than you do. I think I still have a bit of a "wrath" mindset in that I need to keep people topped off rather than to wait, melee/Judge, let them drop 40k health and then hit them with a DL. I am instead casting some HL on them. Perhaps I need to rethink this but, dang, DL costs 4x more mana than HL does and only heals for twice more. That just DOES NOT make sense to me.

In other words, I don't see how you are doing 12k HPS unless chain casting DL which would leave you OOM no matter how much mana regen you had. Please help me out htere.

2. Are you casting Judgement on CD for mana regen (or as quickly as possible given health levels?)

3. I am probably not hitting Holy Shock right at CD; my guess would be that my avg cast time between HS is probably at the 7-9 sec window instead of the 6s window. Do you use an addon to indicate when it comes off CD.

4. Obviously, if I tightened up my HS rotation, my Holy Power would generate faster for more WoG casts.

5. Sigh....ToR. I really don't like it because I am typically not healing my Beacon target but perhaps I need to relook it. However, that brings up another question about spec.

- It is obvious that you are taking Paragon of Virtue because of the 2 min CD on AW. You also take ToR. And you take Aura Mastery due to your comments. I am making the assumption that you are taking the "standard" build of Conviction and Sacred Cleansing and Speed of Light and all that other. (Blessed Life? It procs a ton of HoPow for me!)

- What this means is that you are taking more than 31 points in Holy and less than 10 points to spend in the other trees. What of Divinity, Eternal Glory, Crusade or Improved Judgement are you not taking (bye bye PoJ...how I will miss thee).

- Good idea on the Divine Plea macro. I have been aligning my use of Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath more with Holy Radiance to increase that healing rather than using it to counteract DP and have not been using it on CD.

sherck wrote:5. Sigh....ToR. I really don't like it because I am typically not healing my Beacon target but perhaps I need to relook it. However, that brings up another question about spec.

Personally I wouldn't drop ToR for Blessed Life.

I do heal my Beaconed tank almost exclusively though. And this is purely from a 25 man perspective. But with all the free healing we do, PotI and Enlightened Judgements, all this is free healing on the Beaconed tank. Doesn't seem like much of course, but it all adds up.

I still cast about twice as many Holy Lights as Divine Lights, so I suppose I'm not getting all that much Holy Power from ToR. To be fair though, I rarely find myself in need of more. I've never even considered taking Blessed Life for pve. I only recently switched my mainspec to Holy after playing Ret for ages. Random Holy Power procs was one of the biggest issues Ret had before this patch, I really don't want to go back to that. With ToR, I can even plan ahead and make sure I have full Holy Power for a heavy aoe damage phase for example.

At this point, I'd also rather use cooldowns to boost Holy Radiance on something like Feud on Chimaeron, not just to offset Divine Plea. Divine Plea lasting 9 seconds is a big deal, and I feel like I can fit that in if I need it on most fights. Judging almost on cooldown is incredibly important for mana of course. Arcane Torrent and the Archaeology trinket help too. Not really liking Jar of Ancient Remedies so far, might just stick with Core of Ripeness.

Denounce (0), also good for pvp, adventuringDivine Favor (1)Infusion of Light (2)Daybreak (2)

Enlightened Judgements (1/2), I used to have 2, but backed off as 26% hit was useless, and most of the time if the tank is within 40 yards of me, then the boss should be within 35Beacon of Light (1)Speeed of Light (3)Sacred Cleansing (1)

I don't think you should ever reduce Protector of the Innocence because even if they nerfed it, its still a good self heal that transfers over to beacon. And getting a instant holy shock proc, which leads to HS->HS->WoG, that's 3 heals that ticks off PotI, which transfers to beacon, etc. etc.

Levantine wrote:Crusade increases the healing done by Holy Shock by 30%. I don't know where you got the idea that it was just a damage talent from.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

Holy Shock should be your most cast spell. I need to work harder on training myself to cast it on CD...I bet I could generate an extra 100 HoPow over the course of a 3 hour raid if I just cast it on CD.

A 30% boost to a spell you should cast 9-10 times a minute; 50-80 times in a typical boss encounter, is a pretty good use of 3 talent points.

I follow Hrobertgar's spec exactly with the following 2 exceptions: I take 1 point out of Last Word and 2 points out of Improved Judgement in order to put 3 points in Crusade.

I ran this spec for the first time on Wednesday and tried to change my playstyle completely. Things that I tried to do differently Wednesday:

- Stayed in melee range whenever possible for SoI procs.- Cast my Divine Plea/Avenging Wrath/Divine Favor/VP trinket "on use" macro on CD.- Holy Shock on CD- Judge on CD (harder with only a 15 yard range)- Only cast Divine Light as a timed heal spell. No Holy Light (which was TOUGH!)- Use Lay on Hands pretty much on CD for mana returns- Use Arcane Torrent on CD- Used Holy Radiance much more often but did try to "save" it if a boss mechanic called for it at a certain time.- Crusader Strike if nothing else was needed for the GCD- Only use HoPow on WoG.

I see the potential of this playstyle; my mana returns were suprisingly good and I was rarely worried about mana even with Divine Light being my primary "go to" spell. My HPS was only in the 9k range (not 12k like noted above) but that may be a product of my gear...I only had 2 epics for that run (crafted shield, drop belt) so most of my gear is 346.

Anyway, look into Crusade if you try to Holy Shock on CD. It is a good use of your talent points.

sherck wrote:Holy Shock should be your most cast spell. I need to work harder on training myself to cast it on CD...I bet I could generate an extra 100 HoPow over the course of a 3 hour raid if I just cast it on CD.

This is incorrect, there are levels of haste where it is beneficial to delay the casting of holy shock by up to a second to finish other heals. As haste gets higher and higher, holy shock gets less and less important (as well as damage).

sherck wrote:A 30% boost to a spell you should cast 9-10 times a minute; 50-80 times in a typical boss encounter, is a pretty good use of 3 talent points.

This is however right, the use of talent points here should be a given.

sherck wrote:I follow Hrobertgar's spec exactly with the following 2 exceptions: I take 1 point out of Last Word and 2 points out of Improved Judgement in order to put 3 points in Crusade.

I can't say for sure as I dont know what spec excatly you are talking about, but looking at what I presume to be your armory and I can't find much argument in terms of a raid spec. You may find you gain more from a point in imp judgement compared to the 2nd point in blessed life (the second point is not as effective as the first), depending on how often you find yourself out of range. For heroic raids you may wish to look for a PoJ spec.

sherck wrote:I ran this spec for the first time on Wednesday and tried to change my playstyle completely. Things that I tried to do differently Wednesday:

- Stayed in melee range whenever possible for SoI procs.- Cast my Divine Plea/Avenging Wrath/Divine Favor/VP trinket "on use" macro on CD.- Holy Shock on CD- Judge on CD (harder with only a 15 yard range)- Only cast Divine Light as a timed heal spell. No Holy Light (which was TOUGH!)- Use Lay on Hands pretty much on CD for mana returns- Use Arcane Torrent on CD- Used Holy Radiance much more often but did try to "save" it if a boss mechanic called for it at a certain time.- Crusader Strike if nothing else was needed for the GCD- Only use HoPow on WoG.

This "playstyle" will quickly become very poor when you start doing heroic raids or the hardest normals (nefarian). Melee range is fine, although some mechanics need you in range.

- Cast my Divine Plea/Avenging Wrath/Divine Favor/VP trinket "on use" macro on CD.This is what I have the biggest issue with. It is a -horrible- use of AW and DF to tie them up with a 50% healing reduction. If you EVER use divine plea, it should be during a lull in damage. If you EVER use AW/DF, it should be during periods of damage that require it (usually times when you need to use holy radiance). The VP trinket should be used on CD once you go below 90% mana and predict that you aren't going to get anymore mana.

- Use Lay on Hands pretty much on CD for mana returnsThis is a poor use of an otherwise powerful tool that is extremely useful for when you find someone has made a mistake and people dip below 20k hp (especially tanks). The mana gain is good, but you should only use it as such if you have already, potted, DPd, used all raid-wide mana regen tools. LoH is a burst healing cooldown, you will not be able to use it willy-nilly come heroic raiding.

- Only use HoPow on WoG.Just no, if anything only use HP on LoD. Only a select few fights need WoG use over LoD use, maloriak and Chimaeron heroic. If you run 10 man, the majority of skill involved in healing is about excellent use of LoD.

sherck wrote:I see the potential of this playstyle; my mana returns were suprisingly good and I was rarely worried about mana even with Divine Light being my primary "go to" spell. My HPS was only in the 9k range (not 12k like noted above) but that may be a product of my gear...I only had 2 epics for that run (crafted shield, drop belt) so most of my gear is 346.

Anyway, look into Crusade if you try to Holy Shock on CD. It is a good use of your talent points.

Cheers,

In all honesty, paladins should rarely have mana issues. You have far better ways to keep mana up than some of the things you said. Heal intelligently, don't focus on meters. I've said it before, but if you keep your assignments alive, then it doesn't matter if you do 9k HPs or 15k HPS. HPS is just some useful tool on the side. Judging on cooldown is the most useful mana tool we have right now, you should be able to gain the majority of your mana from it. You should look to match your healing done to the damage profile, once you can do that you are on course to be an excellent healer.